Terms of Use

1. What Connect the Dots is

Students create a profile showing their studies, skills and work. Businesses search those profiles and can ask to contact a student. A student's contact details are shared with a business only if the student approves that business's request. We don't run interviews, employ anyone or take part in any agreement between a student and a business.

2. Who can use it

• You must be 18 or older.
• You sign in with a Google account. Students must use a personal @gmail.com account; businesses can use any.
• You choose once whether you are a student or a business, and you may only have one account of each kind.
• You're responsible for what happens on your account, so keep your Google account secure.

3. Students

• Your profile must be truthful: your real name, the institution and degree you actually study or studied, and work that is yours.
• Only link to content you have the right to share.
• You decide who gets your contact details. You can approve or decline any request, change a decline to an approval later, and stop a business from asking again.

4. Businesses

• Use your real name and the real name of your company.
• When a student approves your request, use their contact details only to discuss genuine work, internship, project or similar opportunities with that student.
• Don't send spam or unrelated marketing, don't share, sell or publish a student's details, and don't add them to mailing lists.
• If a student asks you to stop contacting them or to delete their details, do so promptly.
• Once you receive a student's details you are responsible for them under POPIA, the same as for any other personal information you hold.
• After a student declines, you may ask once more after 90 days, with a message saying what has changed, unless the student has blocked further requests.

5. Things nobody may do

• Pretend to be someone else, or create fake profiles or companies.
• Harass, threaten or discriminate against anyone.
• Copy or scrape profiles, or collect information from the site by automated means.
• Try to get around the approval step, access someone else's account, or break or overload the site.
• Use the site for anything illegal, including offering fake jobs or asking students for money.

6. Your content

You keep ownership of what you add to your profile. You allow us to store it and show it to other users as described in these terms and our Privacy Policy, for as long as it's on your profile.

7. Prices

Prices are shown on the home page, in rand in South Africa and in US dollars elsewhere. Paid plans aren't live yet: until they are, Connect the Dots is free to use. Before we start charging, we'll update these terms with the payment, cancellation and refund rules and tell you on the site. Nobody will be charged without first choosing a paid plan.

8. Suspending or closing accounts

You can delete your account at any time from your dashboard. We may suspend or delete an account that breaks these terms or puts other users at risk. Where reasonable, we'll tell you why first.

9. No guarantees

We don't check the information people put on their profiles and can't guarantee that it's accurate, that any business will contact you, or that any opportunity will work out. Do your own checks before sharing more information or agreeing to anything, and never pay someone to get a job. The site is provided as it is, and we can't promise it will always be available or free of errors.

10. Limit of our responsibility

As far as the law allows, we aren't responsible for what users do with each other, including how a business uses contact details a student shared, or for indirect losses. Nothing in these terms limits rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act or other South African law that can't be excluded.

11. Changes

If we change these terms, we'll update the date at the top and tell you on the site before important changes take effect. If you keep using the site afterwards, the new terms apply.

12. Law and contact

These terms are governed by the law of South Africa. Questions or complaints: beard@beardtio.com.